In this play about the Deadly Sin of Lust Saint Francis almost blind and toothless and nearing the end of his life revisits Assisi where he encounters Pica a young girl with the same name as his mother; Mother Clara of Saint Damian's Convent; and Mona Lucrezia (now a mad woman) with whom he had a love affair when he was a wild willful young man known as Francis the Frenchman and she was a young married woman. Saint Francis still seeks expiation for the "load of sin" with which he has offended God. The play poses questions about the true meaning of love-and as Wilder wrote about "the ideas of the Erotic as Destroyer and the Erotic as Creative."